


Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever

by aleida (Ali_Latis)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Chicken Soup, M/M, Post-TRC, Pre-Epilogue, Sick Character, Sickfic, Whump, chicken soup fixes everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 07:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ali_Latis/pseuds/aleida
Summary: Adam Parrish doesn't get sick. He doesn't have time to get sick.But after everything with Glendower and the demon, Adam's body betrays him. His throat is on fire, his skin is a desert, and he can't stop coughing even though every time he does he wants to squeeze his neck until the pain dissipates.But he forgot the toothpaste at the grocery store, so now he's hoping that Ronan's the kind of boyfriend that will an errand for him.





	Feed a Cold, Starve a Fever

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: A sick and feverish person stumbling around the grocery store looking for the last thing on their list. Once they find it and they go through the chaos of checkout and get back to their car, they slump against the drivers seat and sit there for a minute, steeling themselves for the drive home.
> 
> As soon as they get home they realize they forgot that important ingredient! Near tears, they call their friend/SO begging them - “i’m sorry to bother you, i’ll replace it the next time i go out, you can just drop it off i’m so sorry” - but that person realizes that shit, this person is really sick. how can they even prepare dinner for themselves?
> 
> “You forgot to buy the chicken? I’ll bring it over, along with some chicken stock, because i’m making you soup tonight.”

It starts as a tickle in Adam’s throat that he can’t quite clear away. He grumbles through his shift at the factory and starts coughing when he’s halfway through his third oil change at Boyd’s. By the time his shift is over, his throat is dry and scratchy, and he can’t stop coughing. His skin feels like a desert, papery-dry and fever-hot to the touch.

Adam makes it through his shift at Boyd’s by not thinking about how his body feels, just what he needs it to do. His hands go through uncapping coolant tanks and oil valves without Adam thinking about it. When he’s done, Adam climbs into his tri-colored car and slams the key into the ignition and speeds out onto the street. If he takes a moment to sit in the driver’s seat, he’s not going to move again.

He stops at the grocery store because he’s out of nearly all his basics except for some dry cereal that he mostly ate for breakfast before school. With a single bag of groceries, Adam drives back to St. Agnes, chokes down a dry peanut butter sandwich, and spends several hours writing the response paper for English and translating the Latin assignment.

Finally, sometime after midnight, Adam closes all his books. His eyes are gritty and sore, and his breath is raspy. Adam jolts his way to the tiny bathroom and starts his washing up. The water feels like ice on his skin. He places his hands at the bottom of the sink and lets the water run over his hands. The coolness of the water, the liquid, smooth feeling of it makes Adam think that he’s scrying. Scrying and only seeing his hands, his and his alone now. No more trees whispering leafy languages in his deaf ear.

When Adam reaches for his toothbrush, he realizes that he forgot to pick up toothpaste at the store. His current tube of toothpaste is flattened up to the spout, like a cement truck ran it over. Suddenly, everything is impossible. He can’t brush his teeth, and he has to brush his teeth before he can sleep, and he has to sleep or he’s going to get sick. The only option is to call Ronan.

“Parrish?” Ronan answers. Slightly hoarse like he hasn’t been using his voice lately.

“I forgot the toothpaste,” says Adam.

“Huh? What?”

Ronan must’ve been sleeping, and Adam feels suddenly guilty. Ronan doesn’t sleep much, and he’s slept even less since Gansey died and lived again. But Adam just needs this one thing.

“I forgot to buy toothpaste,” Adam says pathetically. “I’m out. I have to brush my teeth.”

“Where are you?” 

Ronan’s phone rustles and whispers on the other end and reminds Adam of Cabeswater. He listens to the wind and leaves tickling his ear.

“Adam!”

“What?”  Adam opens his eyes quickly and blinks the light out of his eyes. He stares up at the ceiling until it resolves into shadows and beams again. “I’m at home.”

“I’ll bring you your stupid toothpaste,” Ronan grumbles.

“But you’re sleeping.” It’s barely a protest. Just because Adam feels like he should say something; Ronan should sleep when he can.

“No, I’m gonna come see you,” Ronan says firmly. “I wanna see you.”

“Okay,” Adam says. Ronan doesn’t lie, and Adam expects truth to come pouring out of Ronan’s mouth, sharpened like daggers. Adam’s still getting used to Ronan telling truths about  _ him _ .

The phone in Adam’s hand goes silent without warning. Ronan’s feelings about phones have not changed with his relationship status, and Adam puts the phone down on the bed. He still has to read three chapters for history before his class tomorrow. 

Adam lays the book out on his desk and stares at the page in front of him. He only gets two pages in before his hand travels to the side of his head and presses in hard. He can feel his good ear burning from the inside out, throbbing in time with his quick pulse, and as he presses in on his ear, the pressure only makes his heartbeat louder, like he’s underwater, like he’s deaf in both ears now.

Something brushes Adam’s shoulder, and he jerks. Then he regrets.

“Whoa, hey,” says the muffled voice at his bad ear. “‘S just me, Parrish.”

“Ronan?”

Ronan frowns down at Adam while Adam peers through gummy, scratchy eyes up at him. Ronan sets down the plastic grocery bag in his hand and lays his palm across Adam’s forehead. Adam moans and leans into the pressure. Ronan’s skin is cool against his, and Adam wants to peel his burning, dusty skin off and live in Ronan’s skin instead.

“You’re burning up,” Ronan says. He cups Adam’s hot face with his hands and steers him to lean back in the chair. Adam goes smoothly, perfectly willing to go wherever Ronan guides him. When they go out to visit the Barns, together now, Ronan will grab Adam’s hand in his and pull him along like they’re both kids going out on an adventure.

Which, considering some of the dream things in the barn, Adam thinks isn’t that unreasonable.

Ronan’s hands leave Adam’s face, and a quiet moan escapes Adam’s mouth. He can’t help it. Without Ronan touching him, his skin burns and his ear throbs again. He feels like he’s drifting, anchorless. Adam presses the heels of his hands into his temples, trying to get some of that sensation back. Through the rhythmic pounding in his ears, he hears several muffled thuds coming from his desk. When he opens his eyes, several white boxes and colorful bottles are lined up on his desk, and Ronan stands beside the whole thing peering at the back of a blue bottle like he can’t read the fine print.

“What?”

“Does your throat hurt?” Ronan says like it’s the second time he’s had to ask. Adam hadn’t heard him say anything.

“What is that?” Ronan in his space is still just odd enough that Adam wakes up a little bit more, enough to pay attention to Ronan putting opening up the bottle of cough medicine and using the tiny cup to pour out a precise measurement.

“Meds,” Ronan grunts. “When people get sick, they take medicine.” He hands Adam the tiny cup. “Drink this.”

Adam stares at the tiny cup.

“Lynch.”

“Drink it.” Ronan’s hand refuses to move, which means the tiny cup of blue cough syrup is still hovering in front of Adam’s face. “You’ll get better sooner, and then you can cuss me out better.”

Adam’s throat burns so he grabs the tiny cup and tosses the cough syrup back like a shot. It tastes like it was supposed to be a blue raspberry sucker but then inherited a quart of white vinegar. But the syrup coats the back of his throat and cools his tongue down enough that he can talk.

When Adam looks up again, Ronan is fiddling with his hot plate and a small pan. He slams a can out of the grocery bag and works a can opener angrily around the rim.

“What’re you doing?” Adam blinks as Ronan turns the can over into the hot pot.

“Making you soup,” says Ronan. “Sick people are supposed to eat soup.”

“Lynch, it’s like midnight.”

“Shut up.” Ronan stares at the broth like he’s angry at it for being cold. “You’re sick, so you’re getting soup. Feed a fever, right?”

“Starve a fever. Feed a cold,” Adam says into his book. With his eyes still open, the text on the page blurs into fuzzy soot against a gray sky, pulsing in time with his heartbeat in his ears.

“Well, that’s stupid.” Ronan swishes the soup around the pan on the hot plate, not having a spoon immediately at hand. He looks around the apartment until he spots Adam’s stack of dishes on the shelf above the sink. Two plates, two bowls and a handful of cutlery standing in one of his three cups. Ronan pulls down a bowl and snags a spoon to clatter into the bowl. “We’re not letting you starve.”

He says it like he means  _ I’m taking care of you, idiot _ .

“I asked you to bring toothpaste,” Adam says. 

“Yeah, got that.” Ronan hefts the plastic grocery bag with one hand, and Adam can vaguely see a blue and green rectangular box still sitting in the bottom of the bag. “After you eat. That’s how that works, Parrish.”

“Where’s the receipt?” Adam asks. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Ronan.”

“I said don’t worry about it,” Ronan snaps. “Eat this, then sleep, then we’ll figure it out if you’ve still got a hard-on for paying me back.”

He thrusts the bowl of soup under Adam’s nose, but Adam sees him slide the history book quickly out of the way and closed with his other hand, so the soup doesn’t spill over onto his textbook. Adam’s too fuzzy and his head is pounding too much to survive an actual argument. Not when he and Ronan can both be as stubborn as each other. So he slides the soup closer to himself and start slurping at the broth.

The soup is mostly salty and hot at the back of his throat, and it stings a bit, but the steam clears out his nose, and the heat on his tongue feels like it’s clearing away the dryness that made his mouth feel like one big rash. Ronan sits down on a cardboard box that serves as Adam’s second chair.

“Bet you don’t have a thermometer, either,” Ronan says. He reaches out and presses the back of his hand against Adam’s forehead as Adam eats his soup. Adam just keeps eating without moving his head so that Ronan’s hand will stay there. He eats until his spoon scrapes the bottom of the bowl blindly looking for the last of the soup. Then Ronan takes the bowl from him.

“Okay, time for bed.” 

“I got homework,” Adam protests.

But Ronan’s hands are on his face again, and then on his arms, pulling him up and supporting him as they shuffle across the apartment together like some three-legged hybrid-human. Ronan lowers Adam onto the bed and wiggles the sheet down past Adam’s body.

“Hey.” Adam grabs Ronan’s wrist, closing over the wristbands and the cool flesh beyond them. “You’re good at that.”

“Putting you to bed, Parrish?” Ronan scoffs. “Whatever, we can do the kinky stuff if you want.”

“Taking care of me,” says Adam. “It’s good.”

He thinks of the way Ronan tucks Opal’s hair under her stocking cap, smoothing down the ends of wispy hair. And when Chainsaw caws incessantly, Ronan just picks up the bird and smooths down the largest wing feathers with the same motion.

“Softy,” Adam accuses.

Ronan pulls the sheet up over Adam’s chest and scoffs.

“Whatever, Parrish.”

Adam closes his eyes and feels a cool hand brushing his forehead again, smoothing away his hair and stroking across his temple above his ear. 

He sleeps.

  
  



End file.
